Save the Children, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), yesterday, said more than 27 million children were driven into hunger and malnutrition by extreme weather events in countries heavily impacted by the climate crisis in 2022.
  
It noted that the figure was a 135 per cent increase over the previous year tally, according to a new data analysis released ahead of COP28, adding that the majority of nations, where weather extremes were the main driver of hunger last year, inhabited the Horn of Africa.
   
The NGO found that kids made up nearly half of the 57 million people pushed into acute food insecurity across 12 countries in the period under review.
 
The assessment was based on data from the Integrated Food Security Classification or IPC scale, a monitoring system for assessing hunger emergencies in 58 countries.
  
 The IPC has estimated that the number of people facing hunger in countries where extreme weather events were the main driver of food crises had nearly doubled in five years – soaring to 57 million in 2022 from about 29 million people in 2018. Ethiopia and Somalia accounted for about half of the 27 million children.
    
Heavy rains and floods in recent weeks have displaced about 650,000 people, out of which about half are kids, cutting families off from accessing food and medical care. The current flooding could be just as devastating for the country as the years of drought that left millions of children hungry and malnourished.
  
Yearly, conflicts and economic shocks push even more children into hunger than weather extremes. Conflict was the primary driver of hunger for 117 million people in 19 countries last year.
 
IPC data also revealed an eight-fold increase in the number of people facing hunger because of economic shocks in five years, jumping to about 84 million people in 2022 from 10 million in 2018. 
  
Globally, an estimated 774 million children – or one third of the world’s child population – are living with the dual impacts of poverty and high climate risk, according to Save the Children’s report, Born into the Climate Crisis. 
  
Save the Children’s Chief Executive Officer, Inger Ashing, said: “In a world where wildfires, floods, droughts and hurricanes are becoming the frightening new normal, children today not only face a climate emergency, but a landscape of heightened inequalities, where hunger is an unwelcome guest at an already crowded table.  As climate-related weather events become more frequent and severe, we will see more drastic consequences on children’s lives.”